Amir Lavon's series, 'On my way home', From 2000 to 2017, photographer Amir Lavon regularly walked the streets of Israel, capturing all that the streets had to offer.

Lavon says, "On view of my photographs is to look into the soul of a broken city. From the pictures, you can almost hear the rattle of the cars, the tap of high heels on concrete and the commotion of midtown rush hour. But if the city is the theatre, it’s the people who take center stage.

It seemed to me that the unifying, ongoing theme of the series was that it was about eyes. It was about looking, Through my photos, I elevates these fallen characters, pulls them out of the dirt and makes you examine them and in doing so, immortalizes their struggle. I guess I believe in the remedial power of art.

I'm definitely implying a lot of things and hopefully making people aware of some of the political realities on the street. More than calling into question this disparity, I hope it gets under the viewer’s skin “ike a beetle that bores into your brain.

There is light in the shade, of course, and littered throughout the powerful statements on class and capitalism are moments of delightful humor.

My photographs also speak truth as plain fact, with no double entendre implied. Quoting Garry Winogrand, There's nothing more mysterious than a fact clearly described. So that's another kind of photograph; that doesn't try and do anything but show you exactly the way something looks. But by virtue of it being a photograph, it is absolutely different from life."

A 36 year old street and documentary photographer based in Afula, Israel, works on long term projects. Also an English teacher and photography teacher for special aids students and student at high risk community in the education system.

Lavon says, "Most of my work is being done in the streets, telling the story of the simple man, the story of life and place.
Lately started to learn photo therapy as a tool for a better life and Education.
Student for curating art and photography.

More than anything Street Photography is an attitude, it is an openness to being amazed by what comes your way, it is unlearning the habit of categorizing and dismissing the everyday as being ‘just the everyday’ and beginning to recognize that extraordinary, beautiful and subtle stories are occurring in front of you everyday of your life if you can see them. I actually think you can be a Street Photographer without a camera and without making photographs; it is really just the more insecure Street Photographers like me that actually have to record and show off their ability to 'see’.
As a street photographer you must to be a "street animal" , to wander the streets watching, observing, hoping that something will occur before of you I don’t have preference of whom to photograph and since Street Photography is reactive and spontaneous, there is little to no time afforded to think or intellectualize, but I also look for those who seems like nobody will ever tell their story.

There is only one subject in Street Photography: people, Street Photography concerns itself with Life, Humanity, everyday random moments, human interaction and because of that you are using small cameras, it's less about photography and more about people and the life in the streets.

Street Photography helps me understand the nature of my society and my place in it, it's a lot about the place you live and the community around you, many people will say that more than Street Photography is a kind of art it's an attitude."

Andy House has 35 years of production management experience supervising television series and movies in more than a dozen U.S. cities, as well as locations in Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, Austria, Australia, China, Taiwan, Thailand and Russia.

His job titles have included Executive in Charge of Production for Gaumont Int. TV, Senior Vice President of Production for Sony Pictures TV, freelance production manager and assistant director. Since retiring from full time employment he now splits his time between working as an adjunct instructor at the American Film Institute, personal photography projects, classes at Los Angeles Center of Photography and worldwide travel.

Armineh Hovanesian says of her work, "
My photographs are not generally planned in advance, and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on the viewer’s mind, something has been accomplished."

Awarded, Published and Internationally Exhibited photographer:
Born in Paris, raised in Tehran and Boston, with a little over 2 years of dormancy in Lisbon, Armineh is an photographer now based in Los Angeles, capturing moments since 2009.

She is one of the early members of the iphoneography movement. She has had no professional training however her vision has been the driving force behind her creations. She also shoots with her DSLR camera. For the time being, photography is a hobby.

SILENT CONVERSATION by Armineh Hovanesian(Click on image for larger view)

BRONX LOCAL by Barbara Hayden(Click on image for larger view)

Barbara Hayden says, "My father was a professional photographer (WWII US Army trained). His darkrooms and studios were playgrounds of magic as he mentored me in his trade (Jackson Heights and Valley Stream, NY). The School of Visual Arts (NYC) provided my formal education.

I am a Street-Shooting-Purist because my images are not staged nor studio lit. No do-overs. A glimpse. An unexplained connection. An almost involuntary action to focus and click. A need to extend the moment for later contemplation.

I was widowed twice, at 25 and 34 years old. My involvement with photography took a back burner while my healing and regrouping led me on a path to the Deaf Community and the field of education.

A dozen years ago, I realized that I didn’t need darkroom access to dive back into photography. I bought a high-end Epson printer, Photoshop software, and a Canon DSLR. (Now I’m OMD mirror-less)

My favorite “haunts” are the Pasadena Rose Bowl Swap Meet and the local L.A. Farmers’ Markets."

Birka Wiedmaier says, "About ten years ago I picked up my first digital camera and started exploring the world around me with it in hand. In the beginning, it was part of exploring Moscow, a huge and beautiful city and to keep memories of my walks. But soon I realized that with a camera in hand I paid more attention to details and the people around me. I was just fascinated and this fascination never left me.

I tried various genres, but my greatest fascination lies in street photography. The people of a city, town or village bring life to the place and give it a face. I like to capture them in candid moments, unnoticed.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN REFLECTION by Carol KleinmanHonorable Mention(Click on image for larger view)

Carol Kleinman says of this image, 'Catch Me If You Can, Reflection', "This is taken at a Farmers Market in Pacific Palisades. The running child and his mother were caught in a reflection as he ran around a corner of a shop in the Village. The reflection caught both of them even if the mother couldn't catch her child.

This is a single exposure digital photograph. Nothing is manufactured or Photoshoped."

Kleinman says, "My work is exclusively devoted to photographing reflections on windows. I build on the long history of photographers, like Eugene Atget, who used reflective surfaces in their images. As early as 1829, William Henry Fox Talbot stated, "The object to begin with, is a window." His work and Atget’s included the window frame as a point of reference. But for me, the image is the reflection itself. The frame is gone. An interplay between fantasy and reality emerges creating an other-worldly quality to the work.

In the tradition of some of the great French photographers, I am a “flâneur” (stroller). I’ll walk for hours on the streets of cities like Paris, Los Angeles and New York, and not take a single photograph. I’m on a visual treasure hunt. Then I’ll spot a complex reflection on a window, get captivated, and start capturing images.

Part of the power of the photographic medium is the “illusion of reality”, the assumption that photographs are pictures of things from real life. In this age of layered, manipulated, “Photoshopped” images, I am dedicated to capturing reality through the un-manipulated “single exposure”. My message is: the world is a visually complex place and we can explore the many layers of life through the apparent layers found in reflections.
A great deal of the impact of my work stems from the fact that my images actually existed at a specific time and place and are not my creations or manipulations. Nothing I do is set up or manufactured. What you see in my images is what I saw. My images say, "Look more deeply...notice the complexities of life...enrich yourself with the wonders that surround you at each moment.

I print my images large and exclusively on canvas. Though it’s hard for some viewers to comprehend, my canvases are not paintings, nor collages, nor assemblage and not multiple exposures or images layered together. They are single exposures… a unique expression of the complexity of the world in which we live.

Over the past 40 years I’ve worked in many media, among them sculpture, oils, watercolors, glass, collage and construction. The type of photography I have done for the past 20 years combines a great deal of what I’ve learned from these media, particularly collage. The most exciting thing to me about the photography I do is its direct connection to reality – the capture of a moment in time."

Carol Kleinman’s romance with reflections began almost 20 years ago in Russia on the train from Moscow to St. Petersburg to be exact. The reflections she saw on the train windows exposed the many layers of life, one on top of the other -- people in the train, the Russian countryside, the cold steel of the dining car. These reflected images, one of top of the other, spoke to her of deeper realities that lie below the surface of our everyday lives. She took out her camera and started shooting.

Since that time, Kleinman has become absorbed in reflections. She has developed unique techniques to reveal the natural interplay of the multiple visual aspects of the world that present themselves in unique moments in time.

Born in Hawaii, Kleinman spent her formative years on the island of Oahu and in San Francisco. She attended the University of Hawaii, Lone Mountain College in San Francisco, and holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Art.

Her work has been recognized in shows in Los Angeles, Palm Desert, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Moscow, Russia. She is currently a member of TAG Gallery at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA. (a cooperative) and Los Angeles Art Association - Gallery 825.

She has received number awards and was recently selected as an “Emerging Artist” in Museé Magazine’s special issue on women artists.

NEW YORK TIMES SQUARE REFLECTION by Carol Kleinman(Click on image for larger view)

New York Times Square Reflection
The reflection on a window of a Times Square tourist shop combined the merchandise inside the with the buildings across the street.

This is a single exposure digital photograph. Nothing is manufactured or Photoshoped.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY WINDOW by Carol Kleinman(Click on image for larger view)

What Are You Doing In My Window?
A mannequin inside the window of Au Printemp, a Paris department store, looks a bit put out. A reflection on the window captures a man walking on the street in one of the flowers in her window. It feels as if she wonders what he is doing there.
This is a single exposure digital photograph. Nothing is manufactured or Photoshoped.

MADE IN MILAN by Christopher St. Armand(Click on image for larger view)

"My name is Christopher St.Armand and I have a passionate relationship with photography.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, I've noticed that the world around me is a live canvas in which I wanted to capture in every waking moment. My origins began with concert/event photography, where I began to develop my optical creativity. Fast forward several years, I have been on a photographic odyssey.

I've had the pleasure of meeting new people of all walks of life, experience various cultures throughout my travels and challenged myself with various photographic projects. Ultimately, I plan to continue to grow with my love for photography and share the world that I view through my lens."

MOTIONLESS EMBRACE by Christopher St. Armand(Click on image for larger view)

UNDER THE PIGEON PERSPECTIVE by Christopher St. Armand(Click on image for larger view)

SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA STREET 2015 by Daniel Postaer(Click on image for larger view)

Daniel Lee Postaer says, "The surreal potential of the everyday draws me toward that uncertain edge of what a photograph can or can’t reveal. Our world dances between light and shadow, splendor and decay, individual and collective. Blending into the City: I wait for that instant where both familiar and evolving backdrops frame a stage for unlikely urban theatre. Within each moment, candid encounters reveal some-kind-of-truth that reads part fiction, part reality.

The act of making pictures allows momentary footing within an uncontrollable existence. It’s the power to create a pause in a world - where we are all vital participants. This pause is followed by the undetermined life of a print; then a chance to understand our place in the grandness of this chaotic scheme."

Postaer is an American artist/photographer. Born in Chicago and raised in Southern California by a Chinese mother and American father, Daniel recently graduated an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2015 where he received the Fellowship in Photography. Postaer left an international marketing and entertainment career for the life-changing pursuit and craft of picture-making. His work explores the ways in which humanity reconciles and resists modernity – across global booms, busts and the transitional spaces in between – as he addresses questions of capital, race/ethnicity, and historical belonging.

Postaer’s prints are wide-scale and of the hyper-moment; surreal scenes of everyday urban theatre. These scenes, he describes, are roughly “eighty-percent non-fiction / twenty-percent fiction,” with as much interest in what a picture may never reveal.

Postaer recently completed two solo exhibitions with Longmen Art Projects. The first was a 33-piece, two-story experiential exhibition at the Longmen's gallery of Motherland. The second was a solo show of his San Francisco, body-of-work titled Boomtown at Photofairs Shanghai. Current long-form projects include Motherland (Urban China), Boomtown (San Francisco), Tokyo, The Desert (Palm Springs), Wilshire Boulevard and The River (Los Angeles).

David Clarkson says, "While serving in the Marine Corps, a friend loaned his camera to me. From the moment I held it and shot a few rolls I somehow felt a connection, a then uncertain joy. After the service I attended CSULB, graduating with a degree in Philosophy. I continued to make photographs and soon converted our bathroom into a darkroom. I was hooked.

Over too many years, my family followed my corporate career, living on both coasts and, for an extended time, in the mid-west. After graduate school and a career managing manufacturing businesses that limited my photography efforts, I now devote most of my time to making photographs, a joy no longer uncertain."

"Photography reconnects me to my beginnings and who I am. My Midwestern family and friends included blacksmiths, railroad men, barkeeps, farmers, industrial line workers, and clerks. Few had educations beyond high school. These folks worked hard and stayed close to their birthplace.

I was one of the few that left. However, time in the Marine Corps, university, and corporate life gave me the feeling that I no longer belonged, loosed from the moorings of my past and uncomfortable in a new life. I traded the familiarity of a small town for the anonymity of the city. Either can kill the soul. Both can provide comfort.

Unfortunately one cannot go back.

Modern urban environments reconnect me to the folks with whom I lived, loved, and laughed. The settings differ, but the players are much the same. Everyday people leading everyday lives crowd these streets. If I cannot return to what once was, I can at least use my camera to get closer, to somehow make a connection, however fleeting.

With my corporate life complete, I am free to walk and make photographs, while exploring today’s hectic cities, among those who feel familiar to me."

Perhaps instead of standing at the river’s edge scooping out water, it’s better to be in the current itself, to watch how the river comes up to you, flows smoothly around your presence, and forms again on the other side like you were never there.” Photographer Paul Graham"

Deb Achak says, "My fine art photography explores my fascination with beach culture, both within the U.S and abroad. The three images in this series were captured on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, 2017. Red Lips and The Selfie were shot digitally using an underwater housing. Swimming with my camera allows me to capture intimate moments with my subjects from the vantage point of the water, a method I like to think of as aquatic “street” photography. I am drawn to the commonalities across cultures in the way we gather, find joy, relaxation and contemplation at the beach, as well as the vivid colors that are unique to each beach experience."

Raised in New Hampshire, Deb Achak holds a master’s degree in social work and is a self-trained photographer and filmmaker. She lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and sons in a grand old home that was once a bed and breakfast.
Deb Achak's fine art photography explores her fascination with water imagery.

She began her exploration of the human relationship to water in her Ebb and Flow series. She has expanded her scope to document the commonalities across cultures in the way we gather, fine joy, relaxation and contemplation at the shore. Her travels have taken her to Hawaii, Italy, California, Florida and Mexico.

Each photograph is an attempt to capture a sense of place and the emotions that people experience when they are in and around water.

CURRICULUM VITAE
EDUCATION

Master of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (2002)
Bachelor of Arts, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH (1990)

Elle Olivia is a photographic artist and bookmaker exploring themes of identity, culture and place in both long term projects and street photography. Her photographs have been published in Oxford American's Eyes On the South, Huck Magazine, and Lenscratch. She was born in Miami, Florida and is currently traveling and creating work along the East coast.

Frank Curran says of this work 'Three Days in New York', "The submitted images are from an exhibit culled from a three-day photo sojourn to NYC last July. While not conscious of doing so at the time, I was engaged in some version of “street photography”.

As a photographer, there cannot be many cities that present a fuller canvas of possible imagery to explore. Being a NYC native, I had the advantage of a comfort level I probably would not have in a more exotic locale.

The neighborhoods were selected based on their proximity via subway to my small hotel room. I did not seek out any specific events where people may be gathering. No need. There’s always something going on in the City.

Obviously, this is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg. For any photographer or artist who has the commitment, there’s more than a lifetime of work to be inspired by here. I’ll be back.

I’ve been a working photographer for more than 30 years. A graduate of Hunter College and Boston University, early in my career I studied with Carl Chiarenza, Stephan Gersh and Chris Enos. I was a staff photographer at Boston City Hospital and have been a freelance photographer for the past 18 years.

All the horizontal images in the exhibit were 17x22”; the verticals are 16x24”, printed on fine art ink jet paper.